Category: United States

  • Elizabeth Warren and Tracee Ellis Ross on the Road to Activism The New York Times 2016-09-17 Philip Galanes Senator Elizabeth Warren, left, and the actress Tracee Ellis Ross having dinner at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington. Credit Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times Tracee Ellis Ross may be working 14 hours a day…

  • In the midst of a nineteenth-century boom in spiritual experimentation, the Cercle Harmonique, a remarkable group of African-descended men, practiced Spiritualism in heavily Catholic New Orleans from just before the Civil War to the end of Reconstruction.

  • Emotional Obama Tearfully Thanks Trump for Granting Him Citizenship Borowitz Report The New Yorker 2016-09-16 Andy Borowitz WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling this “the greatest day of my life,” a visibly moved Barack Obama held a news conference on Friday to thank Donald Trump for granting him U.S. citizenship. “The issue of whether or not I…

  • Meet the Man Who Proved That Discrimination Can Make You Physically Sick Colorlines 2016-09-13 Miriam Zoila Pérez Dr. David Williams pioneered three ways to prove the links between discrimination and poor health. An ever-growing body of research in the fields of public health, sociology and medicine is presenting a strong case for something you may personally know…

  • Virginia’s Indian tribes clear another hurdle toward federal recognition The Washington Post 2016-09-15 Jenna Portnoy, Reporter A House committee has advanced a bill that would give federal recognition to six Indian tribes in Virginia, bringing them one step closer to the end of a multi-year fight for acknowledgment of their place in the nation’s history.…

  • Historic recognition: Washington’s family tree is biracial U.S. News & World Report 2016-09-17 Matthew Barakat, Northern Virginia Correspondent The Associated Press ZSun-nee Miller-Matema poses for a portrait at Mount Vernon, the plantation home of former U.S. President George Washington, in Alexandria, Va., on Monday, July 18, 2016. Miller-Matema is a descendent of Caroline Branham, one…

  • The Strange and Ironic Fates of Jefferson’s Daughters The Daily Beast 2016-09-17 Sally Cabot Gunning Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast Martha Jefferson was Virginia elite. Her half-sister Harriet, though seven-eighths white, was deemed a slave at birth. No one could have predicted their fates. Martha Jefferson was born in 1772, just as Monticello…

  • Trying to remedy racism on its own intellectual terrain is like trying to extinguish a fire by striking another match. The fiction must be unbelieved, the fire stamped out.

  • Unwinding a Lie: Donald Trump and ‘Birtherism’ The New York Times 2016-09-16 Michael Barbaro It was not true in 2011, when Donald J. Trump mischievously began to question President Obama’s birthplace aloud in television interviews. “I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” he said at the time. It was not true in…

  • Trump Drops False ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floats a New One: Clinton Started It The New York Times 2016-09-16 Maggie Haberman Alan Rapperport Donald J. Trump publicly retreated from his “birther” campaign on Friday, tersely acknowledging that President Obama was born in the United States and saying that he wanted to move on from the conspiracy…